


saw my baby down in st. james infirmary (stretched out on that long white table)

by okayantigone



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chairman Election Arc (Hunter X Hunter), Character Death, Gen, Gon Dies after the CA arc, Hospitals, M/M, Mention of Past Suicide Attempt, Mention of autopsy, Mind Control, Trans Ging Freecss, Trans Male Character, mention of kite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 14:02:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18012296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: "i am not angry anymore," pariston says. "you have been gone too long. it's time to come home."ging nods numbly against pariston's warm scarred neck. of course. paris is right. it's time to come home. he wants to come home.





	saw my baby down in st. james infirmary (stretched out on that long white table)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crownsandbirds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownsandbirds/gifts).
  * Inspired by [the stars, the shattered glass, the sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17425745) by [crownsandbirds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownsandbirds/pseuds/crownsandbirds). 



> pariston's nen ability, loosely adapted from crownsandbirds pariging magnum opus
> 
> this fic goes out to all my fans, i was in a daze when i wrote it.

he goes to visit his son in the hospital. that's what he tells himself he is doing. it isn't a lie. his jaw throbs dully with the memory of a punch. he is full of apologies he doesn't mean, good whiskey and the knowledge that this is no longer a meeting he can avoid, nor a journey he can postpone any longer. it's also not a journey he can ever come back from. 

people part for him in the street as he walks almost dazed through the crowds. he avoids their eyes though he feels the knowledge in their gazes, an accusation weighing heavy in each defeat-laden step he takes, as though somehow, they have all been telegraphed the same message, as if they know what has happened, and maybe they do, and maybe they see it in him. 

how strange - he has never been defeated before, has never aquiesced - the word was not in his vocabulary. 

_ are you happy now, _ he wants to ask.  _ i am going to see my son in the hospital.  _

the hospital looks and smells and feels like all hospitals look and smell and feel like, bleach and sickness and death, and beneath that pristine sterile smell something heavy and sticky runs down the perfect walls and settles at the bottom of his stomach. it's a peculiar kind of dread, almost loving and familiar, but he dismisses the thought. that strange familia is just a facet of his imagination, implanting false memory, re-orienting him in this uncanny unhappened deja-vu of a situation. 

the front desk nurse has kind eyes. she lowers her voice sympathetically. she says something vaguely kind and apologetic. he responds in kind, formulaic. 

unbidden, the memory of their summer island off the coast of the kakin port city rises to him, swimming up into his muddled thoughts, as the mud sinks to the bottom. it has been a brutal summer. the mosquitoes had mauled them alive. the humidity in the air felt so thick, you could drown in it, and walking on land was almost harder than deep diving off the cliffs, where they took turns jumping into the waters, naked and wild. 

all their time not spent exploring the cave systems of the island looking for drawings and artefacts was spent in the water. the see had been a bright crystal blue, and you could see the bottom from any depth, impossibly tempting, littered with conch shells, and treasure.    
  
"think how easy it would be to drown," paris had said pensively,  "if you misjudge how far you are from the surface and swim too far down. you'd run out of oxygen before you could swim back up."    
  
he was looking at the golden sand, the same color as his hair, his eyes glittering, bottomless. ging was already drowning. he'd already forgotten how to swim up. he wasn't sure he wanted to. he'd spent endless lazy afternoons laying in the shallows by the beach house they'd rented, looking up at the sky through the muddled stained glass of the quiet waters. 

he was listening to the nurse as though through that same brilliant summer water. burial at sea. 

the elevator goes down. the pressure pops his ears, like a deep dive. why, for a change, can't he go up? the doors open with a detached mechanical hiss.    
  
"through here," the nurse says, leads him through the double dors into the main area. "i'll give you some privacy." then leaves the same way she lead him in. 

he's stuck in the vestibule. on the other side od the containment metal door is gon. ging doesn't want to go. his son is waiting. ging doesn't want to go. he wants to stay. he has never wanted to stay rooted so badly before. gon was meant to find him, to come to him. not the other way around. the pervasive wrongness is sickly sweet, cloying at the back of his throat. he swallows hard past it. he has to do this. to prove to himself that he is everything he always said he was. that he is everything gon believed him to be. and he is not a coward. 

he walks to the door. he pushes it open. the horrible, oil-slick spill of anxiety intensifies. he frrezes in the threshhold, unwilling and unable to step past it in equal measure. incapable of going back, not sure he has the strnegth to move forward. and hasn't that always been the issue with him? 

he doesn't want to look because he knows already. he is tired of seeing horrible things. that thing ont he autopsy table is not, cannot be his son. the picture is all wrong. where is the happy, smiling child everyone always talked about? with a gap toothed smile, and a deft hand at catching fish, with all the golden plans of youth, who will no longer row a boat in the streams on whale island, nor chase foxbears along the grassy hills? where is he now? he blinks, but it doesn't clear the wrongness of the picture any. 

it's as if the coroner's polaroid developed it all wrong. that cannot be pariston hill, sitting on one of the uncomfortable straight-backed metal chairs by the table, his elegant graceful hands folded as if in prayer, eyes closed. he looks more serene than ging has ever known him to be. looks almost asleep, which ging has never seen him do. he blinks again, and he forces his mind to comprehend what his eyes are telegraphing to his brain. he wonders when he will stop having to see horrible things. here, a ruin that he can't seem to fix. 

the picture rights itself, the sunspots disappear, the film develops. 

there is what should be gon - brown, cracked skin and twisted flesh, laid in repose on the gleaming metal table. there is pariston, bowed over him. he is wearing a suit in a rich black velvet. 

ging takes a step forward and pariston comes to life as if by magic, his soft mouth parting in a gasp, rose gold lashes fluttering open. he isn't smiling, which looks almost as wrong on his face as his smile does. ging is not in the mood for his games. he does not want to hear that man's voice, or indulge his mockery. cannot believe the audacity, the disrespect of him, the sheer daring that he would do this. extend their game unto the borders of what everyone else would rightfully recognize as the very depth of personal tragedy. 

he opens his mouth to issue a warning, but as always, paris beats him to it. 

"did you know?" his voice is rough. it's still polished perfect paris, but it now carries some of the sandpaper's texture in the rouding of the words. he finally unfurls, ever graceful, to look at ging, though his eyes, with deft practiced precision avoid ging's eyes, the magic trick of faking eye contact. he wets his lips with the tip of his tongue, and asks again. "answer me this - did you know?" he sounds merely curious. there is no command there. 

ging finds himself brought to a fury so sudden, so startling, it burns through his heart, rises up in his throat. it's the fury pariston never fails to insppire. it's the same thing every time, with pariston. bringing him to anger. to his knees. 

"now is not the time for your games," he says voice quiet, low. dangerous. he does not like to threaten pariston. he does not like to threaten unless he means it. and he means it this time. 

pariston nods, as if to himself, and a smile tugs at his soft full mouth. it's that terrible, terrible smile. ging had known is to well, only know it was only a small wane apparition. moon waxing crescent. 

"so you don't," he says, as though he has won and uncovered some big impossible secret all at once. ging's rage surges. 

"do you know why i'm in here?" paris asks, cocking his head to the side. curious. bird-like. he's like a desert vulture circling overhead, waiting for ging to die of thirst so he can sink his beak into his belly, cloak his claws in viscera. it's a miracle he hasn't punced on gon's carcass already. but this is what pariston has always done. scavenged. the rat. 

ging crosses his arms over his chest, instinctively, defensivelly, tilts his chin up, meets the challenge head on. 

"they were running the autopsy as one does," pariston begins, with his lilsting voice, as if he is telling a story. he always uses that voice when he starts off one of his horrible stories, always, always unaware and uncomprehending of the horror, merely an observer, complicit in his silence, in his own suffering, in the death, in everything that goes wrong, ever. 

"and they ran the samples through the sytem," he continues. ging doesn't need to hear this. he knows all recovered bodies of dead hunters get autopsied. it's associaton policy. furthering research. he knows this. 

"anyway," paris says, grinning widely. his teeth are so perfect. "they pinged a match in the database. to anothe rhunter in the system." 

he spreads his arms out, as though revealing the trick, a grand a-ha-gotcha moment. as if ging is meant to get something from this. 

"that's when they called me," paris continues. when it becomes obvious that ging has no response, that he hasn't gotten it yet, he makes another grand sweeping gesture, indicating the table, and the boy on the table. his smile is strained. ill-fitting like ging has never seen it before. 

"do you know what that is?" paris asks cheerfully. he looks awfully, awfully bright. the black clowying clumps of his aura overpower the flickering fluorescent lights.

"that - " he says and pauses for an imaginary drumroll. "is my son." 

ging sinks to the bottom of their sun-dappled beach, and listens through the water. refuses to hear anything but the waves. manages out, through teeth gnashing on golden sand, "no."

pariston's hands fall down to his sides. "and you didn't know," he says quietly, clicks his tongue. "well. okay then." he nods to hmself again. "alright. you didn't know. i wondered why you didn't tell me. but since you didn't know - i suppose it's okay then. how many men were there? after me, i mean?" he waves his hand dismissively. "no, no. it doesn't matter. we weren't together anymore. it's okay. it's fine."

ging can't find his voice. he wants to say something, but he can't. the salt water, so bright and crystalline blue is choking him. he says "no" again, but it comes out a rough whisper. 

he collapses on the floor, slides down in a graceful sink with his back to the wall, and stares at his hands. his son is dead. his son is pariston's son. they made him together. and now he is dead. a runin like everything else ging tries to recover. 

"i thought," pariston circles the table where gon is laid out carefully, vulture-like. that you had left to hide him from me. it made me… angry. i was angry," he says it earnestly, his voice tinged with that delicate surprise, quietly pleased with himself for the emotion, for identifying it correctly, for expressing it out loud. like a child. "but you didn't know. so i'm not angry anymore," he shakes his head, puts reassurance into his words, like he's heard on tv. 

he kneels in front of ging so they're eye level. he reaches with his beautiful, nimble hands and takes ging's callused hands in his own. "i am going to make it okay," pariston says. his voice is sweet, silky smooth. "we are going to get through this." he gives ging's hands a delicate, gentle squeeze.    
  
"because," he takes a deep, measured breath. his aura surges. ging has seen him do it before. "i love you." paris says warmly, earnestly, his voice so, so damn full of it, like it's the only true thing in the whole world. his aura envelops ging like a blanket soaked in gasoline. it will keep the toxic fumes out. it won't save you from the fire. it's heavy, choking, like a silk tie shoved in ging's mouth. he tries to force his vocal chords into compliance, but he is frozen in place. 

"and," paris continues, that same promising voice,

he has seen pariston do this before. 

_ kite, my sweetheart. my darling angel. poor, poor baby, honey lamb.  _ do not  _ ever  _ do that again.

"no," ging grits out again, but it's merely a whisper. pariston's eyes are oh-so-big, and so, so very apologetic. 

_ fuck me, ging, what did you want me to do? he didn't give me a choice! _ __  
__  
_ you didn't give  _ him  _ a choice!  _ __  
_  
_ __ i'm sorry, would you had fucking i rather let him  die? 

"you love me," pariston says. his aura soars. the picture rights itself. ging can see clearly now. 

"my love," pariston repeats warmly. he pulls ging against his chest, and ging goes willingly. he lets himself be comforted. "i am not angry anymore," pariston says. "you have been gone too long. it's time to come home." 

  
ging nods numbly against pariston's warm scarred neck. of course. paris is right. it's time to come home. he  _ wants  _ to come home.

**Author's Note:**

> (:


End file.
